


Oh, simple thing

by asterismal (asterisms)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:20:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22230070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asterisms/pseuds/asterismal
Summary: “The world hasn’t ended, Harry Potter,” Voldemort says. And then he smiles, baring all his teeth. “Not yet.”
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, Harry Potter/Voldemort
Comments: 18
Kudos: 699
Collections: First Flash Fest of 2020





	Oh, simple thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [queerofthedagger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queerofthedagger/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [queerofthedagger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queerofthedagger/pseuds/queerofthedagger) in the [First_Flash_Fest_of_2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/First_Flash_Fest_of_2020) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> Post-Apocalyptic AU but with magic: There was a world war, atomic bombs, and now nearly everything is wasteland, with weird creatures roaming around. For some reason, Tom/Voldemort and Harry are stuck together, and if they want to survive, they also need to work together. (Possibly no-wizarding-war AU/total disregard of canon? Dealers choice!)

London makes him nervous, these days. 

It’s too quiet. 

And worse, he thinks as he hears boots against the ground somewhere to his left, the sound of low voices he can only just make out, it’s full of fucking _Muggles._ With one hand on his dagger, he sinks back into the shadow of what might have been a bank, before. If there’s one good thing to say about this half-dead shell of a city, it’s that there’s always somewhere to hide. 

The footsteps fade; he doesn’t move. As much as it pains him to crouch here, just waiting, he forces himself to stay still until ten long minutes have passed, counting the seconds carefully.

Finally, he rises. 

The closer he gets to the old Ministry building, he knows, the more Muggles he’ll find. And the bigger the risk that they’ll find him. 

The next band of Muggles he hears is much louder—agitated. 

He can’t quite make out what they’re saying until: “She’s a witch!” a woman’s voice proclaims, “I saw it with my own eyes, I did! She fell from two storeys and landed soft as a feather.”

And suddenly Harry is ignoring every lesson he’s learned in the years since the bombs fell. 

By the first year, every witch or wizard with any sense had abandoned London to the Muggles. If it weren’t for the magic that still leaks into the air from the old Ministry, the need to find the source, Harry wouldn’t be here either. So why one earth… 

He creeps closer. 

Seven Muggles, crowded around the apparent witch and blocking her from view. The woman who must have spoken is holding a club, using it to gesture wildly. She moves, then, and Harry has to clamp a hand over his mouth lest he make a sound and give himself away. 

The Muggles stand over a _child._

In the ten years since the bombs fell, no child in all of Europe (and perhaps beyond, though communication is still limited on that front) has been born with magic. Or, if they have, they’ve been kept a secret. 

And now this girl, who must be no older than four… If it’s true… 

“We can’t let her live,” one of the Muggles says, and Harry’s grip on his dagger tightens as the others nod in agreement. “It’s too dangerous.” 

He doesn’t know what to do. 

Each of them is armed, and he’s certain at least one of them has a gun. He can’t win.

The woman raises her club. 

Just before the blow lands, the girl screams, and Harry drops his dagger to cover his ears, choking on the force of defensive magic. He recovers before the Muggles do, leaping over the low wall he’s been crouched behind. The girl flinches as he gets closer, and he holds out his hands, trying to keep the urgency from his voice. 

“It’s okay,” he tells her. He reaches one hand forward, palm up, and allows the weakest of lights to flicker into existence, then snuffing it out before it can leave any more of a trace. “I’m like you.”

Around them, the Muggles start to recover. But it isn’t the Muggles he’s worried about.

This time, when Harry gets closer, the girl stumbles toward him, and he scoops her onto his back before breaking into a run, heading back toward the city’s edge and leaving the Muggles where they lie. 

An unholy cry rings through the air, and Harry runs faster.

Behind them, the Muggles start to scream. 

The girl dies before they make it out of the city. Harry isn’t surprised. She was too small, too weak, and who knows what injuries she suffered before Harry found her. 

But before she died, she was _real._ She was alive, and she had magic.

He needs to tell Hermione. 

*** 

Almost a year later, Harry sets out for London again. 

In the months since he found the girl, he’s spent more and more of his time beyond the walls. Every time he leaves the settlement they built together, Ron and Hermione try to convince him to stay. 

But he can’t. 

The world is changing again. He refuses to rest until he understands _why._

This time, trouble comes not in the form of _witch-hunting_ Muggles but rather _dead_ ones. A whole settlement full. It isn’t exactly a rare find, but as far as Harry knows, this was one of the most stable compounds along the route to the city, serving as a trade post to all sorts of travelers. 

And then he takes a closer look at the bodies, and he understands. It wasn’t humans who did this. 

The sound of footsteps behind him is enough to startle him to his feet, dagger in hand. 

For a moment, he thinks his eyes must be deceiving him. But, no. He’d know that face anywhere. With barely a thought, he sheaths his dagger and instead draws his recently acquired handgun, pointing it straight at Lord Voldemort’s chest. He flicks off the safety, rests his finger on the trigger.

The man who left it to him only ever had one rule: _“Don’t point it at anyone you’re not ready to kill_.” 

Well. He’s fucking ready. 

It makes him feel slightly better that Voldemort seems just as surprised to see him. “Harry Potter,” the man says, red eyes narrowed. “I thought you’d be dead by now.”

“Funny,” Harry says, “I was about to say the same thing.”

In all honesty, it’s been years since Harry has spared any thought for Voldemort at all. He hasn’t had the time to, not when he was so busy surviving, and then building a place where other people might survive too. 

“Are you going to kill me?” Voldemort asks. 

Harry glares. “I’m considering it.”

“Well.” Voldemort paces forward, and Harry takes a step back, keeps the gun steady. “If you do, I’d prefer if you didn't use a _Muggle_ weapon to do it.”

“I’m sure you would,” Harry says with a mean little smile. He flexes his finger on the trigger, just to see the way the skin around Voldemort’s eyes tightens. “I think it’d be rather poetic.”

Voldemort bares his teeth, but Harry isn’t afraid. 

He’s faced much worse than _this_ since the end of the world. 

“Put the gun away, Harry,” Voldemort says. He sounds tired, suddenly. 

“Why should I?”

“I mean you no harm.”

At this, Harry laughs. He can’t help it. Voldemort moves, as if he might use this moment of distraction to disarm him, and Harry calms immediately, gun held steady. “I don’t believe you.”

“I swear it,” the man says, solemn. “I—” 

But Harry isn’t interested in promises. Not from Lord _fucking_ Voldemort. “Let’s say I put down my gun,” he says. He feels as if he might vibrate out of his skin, as if he’s more alive than he’s been in years. He wonders if Voldemort feels the same. “How do I know you won’t try to kill me?”

“Is my word not enough?”

“No.” Harry narrows his eyes. “Convince me.”

Voldemort sighs, as if he has any fucking right to be annoyed. As if he isn’t the man responsible for almost every single tragedy in Harry’s short life. 

“I suppose it all feels rather pointless, now,” Voldemort tells him with a wry smile. Then, a wicked gleam enters those red eyes. “Although, if you’re truly so desperate for it, I could give it one last try.”

Harry glares, but ultimately decides to leave that last bit alone. For now. He asks, “What do you mean, _pointless?”_

“I came after you because you were a threat to my cause.” Harry snorts, and Voldemort ignores him. “With the world as it is, I’ve found that my priorities have… shifted.”

“Hard to be a Pureblood supremacist when there aren’t any Purebloods left,” Harry says dryly.

Voldemort smiles grimly and says, “Precisely.”

Harry lowers his gun.

Hours later, Voldemort still hasn’t left him alone.

“You know,” Harry says as they pick their way across the wasteland, “You still haven’t told me what your new plan is.”

He can almost hear the grin in his voice when Voldemort says, “You didn’t ask.”

Harry eyes him warily. “I’m asking now.”

Voldemort stops walking, and Harry does too. When the man turns to look at him, there’s a light in his eyes that reminds Harry of the graveyard. “Look around you, Harry Potter,” he says, gesturing toward the horizon. “What do you see?”

“Nothing,” Harry tells him. He looks over the empty land. “Nothing at all.”

“And why is that?”

Harry scoffs. “Oh, I don’t know,” he says, “Maybe it’s because a bunch of Muggles decided to give world annihilation a go?” 

“Not quite,” Voldemort says. He sighs. “The Muggles destroyed this world, it’s true. But tell me, Harry, why have we not fixed it?” 

“We?” Harry asks, unsure where this is going, unsure if he’s going to like it.

Voldemort stalks forward, and Harry scrambles back, hand falling to the gun where it’s holstered at his hip. Voldemort halts, eyes narrowed. 

“Witches and wizards,” he says, half-snarled. Impatient. “Those of us with _magic,_ Harry. We are capable of more than the Muggles can even dream of, and yet we leave this world around us to rot. _Why?”_

“You _know_ why,” Harry says, fists clenched and trembling with helpless anger. He stalks forward, grabs a fistfull of Voldemort’s robes and pulls until Voldemort is forced to bend forward. “Because your fucking Death Eaters were stupid enough to draw the Muggles out. Because we can’t even light a candle without bringing those _beasts_ down upon us. Because magic is—”

“Gone,” Voldemort finishes for him, wrapping one hand around Harry’s fist, rubbing his thumb across the back of Harry’s hand. “Magic is gone, and everyone knows it.” 

When Harry tries to pull away, suddenly uncomfortable with how close they are, Voldemort doesn’t let him. “Let go of me, you—”

“But what if it isn’t?” Voldemort interrupts him. 

Harry stills. “What.”

“Didn’t you hear?” Voldemort asks. He sounds almost… playful. It makes Harry want to punch him. “A girl was found last year, a girl who was born _after_ the bombs fell. Apparently, she had magic.”

Harry remembers the press of her magic, wild and stronger than anything else he’s felt since the blasts. He’s found no others since, but they must exist. Somewhere. 

Which means—

“What are you saying?” he asks, voice weak. Not yet daring to hope. 

“The world hasn’t ended, Harry Potter,” Voldemort says. And then he smiles, baring all his teeth. “Not yet.”

“So, what,” Harry says later, doing his best to recover from the sudden reintroduction of hope into his life, “Your plan is to rebuild? How unlike you.”

Voldemort scoffs. “You don’t know me at all.”

“I know enough,” Harry says. 

Voldemort casts him a narrow eyed look, and then some of the ire fades, softens. “I suppose you do. You of all people.”

And Harry is done with this line of conversation. “Explain it to me,” he says briskly. “How will you rebuild from nothing?”

Voldemort allows the shift. “First, we must be rid of—”

“If you say Muggles, I’m going to shoot you,” Harry warns. 

“—of the beasts,” Voldemort says, glaring. Harry raises his hands in surrender, but he doesn’t apologize. 

It was a reasonable expectation.

“With what weapons?” Harry asks when Voldemort doesn’t elaborate. He trails his gaze down Voldemort’s frame, but there’s no sign he’s armed. “Last time one attacked, it took five of us to bring it down.” 

It takes him a moment to realize Voldemort has stopped walking. 

When he finally notices, he turns to see Voldemort watching him with narrowed eyes, a look of deep contemplation on his face. Which, now that he’s thinking about it—“What happened to your face, anyway?”

“My face?” Voldemort asks, dangerously soft.

“You know, the whole—” Harry gestures loosely in his direction. “If you squint, you almost look human. When did _that_ happen?”

“Five years ago,” Voldemort tells him. When Harry only tilts his head, inviting him to keep going, he sighs. “I grew tired of being screamed at by every Muggle who crossed my path.”

“Hm.” Vanity, Harry thinks. Yes, that would do it. “I’m surprised you didn’t just kill them.”

“Oh, I did.” Voldemort only looks bored when Harry glares. He shrugs, careless. “Would you rather I let them kill me?” he asks. Then, before Harry can even open his mouth, he says, “Don’t answer that.”

Harry bites back a grin. 

The next day, they see London on the horizon. 

They also encounter their first problem. They’re being hunted. 

Voldemort is the first to notice. “To your left,” he says, voice soft.

When Harry looks, he sees the beast. Vaguely boar shaped, the creature is just over a meter in height and covered in thick, coarse hair. It’s smaller than the others Harry has faced, and its tusks haven’t yet grown in. Which means it’s less of a problem than it could be, but still not something Harry wants to deal with. 

He draws his gun. 

While he doubts his pistol will do much unless he can get in a lucky shot, the noise might be enough to warn the beast away if it gets too close. It’s times like these he wishes he’d been given a rifle instead, though he supposes he’s lucky to have gotten his hands on a gun at all.

It’s also lucky, he thinks, that this beast has taken the shape of a boar rather than any of the more dangerous forms he’s seen. He still shudders to remember the corrupted acromantula they stumbled across the first year after the blasts.

The beast comes closer.

The warning shot doesn’t work.

When none of the others work either, Harry abandons the gun and draws his dagger. Nearly as long as his forearm, the blade is coated in poison and traced with runes. It should cut through the creature’s coat with no problem.

All he has to do is not get trampled. 

The fight passes quickly. As far as he can tell, this beast is both young _and_ weak, likely starving. 

It doesn’t fall easy, but it falls. With a grunt, Harry pushes the best’s corpse away once it does. When he cut its throat, some of the spray got into his mouth, and he spits the blood to the ground. Its color is a thick, deep red, and it tastes of wet soil. 

He wipes one arm across his face. He can already feel the blood beginning to stick and dry. 

Voldemort comes up beside him, then. 

“Harry Potter,” he says. He sounds almost fond as he takes in the sight of Harry, covered in blood and trembling. “I do believe I missed you.” 

“You—” Harry flushes, though he doubts it can be seen beneath the gore across his face, glaring. “Piss off.”

“Ah.” Voldemort is smiling, and Harry wants to kick him. “Perhaps not.”

When Voldemort offers him a handkerchief, Harry snatches it out of his hands. He feels absolutely no remorse about covering it with dirt and blood. “Thanks for the help, by the way,” he says, waspish. 

Voldemort accepts the handkerchief back with barely a twitch of disgust. “You didn’t appear to need any.”

“Admit it,” Harry says, rolling his eyes, “You just wanted to watch me fight.”

“It _was_ rather pleasing to witness,” Voldemort tells him, utterly without shame.

For a moment, Harry only stares, caught off guard by the admission. Then, he snaps his mouth shut and turns on his heel to stomp away. He recalls finding a stream near here on his last trip, and he could use a bath.

Later that night, once he's clean, Harry decides to risk a small fire. 

As he stares into the flames, wondering if it would be worth it to find the beast’s corpse and harvest any of its parts to trade, Voldemort sits down beside him.

“You asked me what weapons I have,” Voldemort tells him apropos of nothing. 

Harry takes a moment to catch up. “I did.” When he looks, Voldemort is watching him, intent. “You didn’t tell me.”

“You didn’t exactly give me a chance,” Voldemort says dryly, and Harry grins. 

“You gonna tell me now?” he asks. 

“Yes,” Voldemort says, solemn. “Yes, I think I will.”

He reaches into his robes and Harry uncurls, sits up straight. When Voldemort’s hand emerges, it’s holding—“Your wand,” Harry says, reverent, breathless. 

Without thinking, he reaches out, touches one finger to its familiar, bone-white shape. It shivers beneath his touch, as if in welcome, and Harry thinks he could cry.

If Voldemort weren’t here, he thinks he might have.

His own wand was destroyed years ago. Like many others, it burnt itself up during the initial firestorms. Some people have taken to channeling their magic through new objects, whatever they can find, but Harry never did. 

It hadn’t felt right.

And now… 

“How—?” He doesn’t finish the question, and Voldemort doesn’t answer it. 

Instead, he holds the wand out to him, handle first. “Take it,” Voldemort says.

Harry’s own gaze is trained on the offered wand. And yet, he feels Voldemort’s eyes on him, the weight of his attention. 

Holding his breath, Harry grips the handle. 

And it’s as if the air is punched from his lungs. Gold and red sparks sing into the air, showering across the pair of them. He feels as if he’s come home, suddenly, as if he never left it. 

Voldemort is still looking at him, unmoved by the display. Or— That’s not right, Harry thinks as he finally turns to meet the man’s gaze. The light reflects in Voldemort’s eyes, and the red looks less like blood and more like fire. 

“Come with me, Harry Potter,” Voldemort says, burning. “Help me build something new.”

And Harry...

He thinks he couldn't say no if he tried.


End file.
